An “Exquisite Corpse” combines documentary, fiction and experimental film-making as it traverses the social and oneiric landscape of a region struggling between modernity and tradition. It explores ritual and performance from festivals to everyday life combining the real and the surreal, the fantastical and the banal, that which is vital and that which is purely entertainment. The reenactment of rituals within changing crowds and contexts illuminates the complex striving for understanding and for giving meaning to the small acts of everyday life. They also glimpse the need for release and catharsis. The myths, as torrid and exuberant as the geography, are often more concrete than reality and during the autopsy the corpse itself reveals something more repugnant than death, the submission of the living to it. This fantastical collective biography explores the psyche of an individual reflecting a multitude. It immerses into a dense mythological universe by narrating the life of a being in the process of unbeing, a character becoming a corpse.

El Cadáver Exquisito | Collaborations
by
Elric
Every sin is the result of a collaboration.
- Lucius Annaeus Senecca
El Cadáver Exquisito
was a true collaboration and a blind one. From one artist’s hands to
another we discovered a film, formed from endless possibilities.
When Victor first approached me to edit the film I was excited but a little
hesitant as I was concerned it may be an ethnographic documentary abou...

El Cadáver Exquisito
by
Sombra
El Cadaver Exquisito began as a seed of an idea but once it was
given birth it seemed we could only run to keep alongside its momentum.
I did a lot of writing for the film in the beginning as
Victor was shooting. We spoke of using a voice over, a narrator who
might tells its story like a fable. As the visuals and footage piled up
however, it was clear they wanted to be their own narrator.
...

El Cadaver Exquisito | Update
by
Sombra
After a series of private screenings for film/video/art groups,
scholars and individuals, based in the greater metropolitan area of
NYC, we are in the final stage of El Cadáver Exquisito.
The main purpose of those screenings was to test the cut and gather
both general and specific criticism for the movie in order to help us
polish the editing, and therefore, the narrative. The screenings have
also smoothed out o...

El Cadáver Exquisito | Verdant Tunnel
by
Sombra
Film posters have been used since the earliest public exhibitions of film.
They began as outside placards listing the programme of (short)
films to be shown inside the hall or movie theater. By the early 1900s,
they began to feature illustrations of a scene from each individual film
or an array of overlaid images from several scenes.
El Cadáver Exquisito explores the psyche of an individual reflecting a multitu...

El Cadáver Exquisito | the view from the steps
by
Sombra
A shadow passes, stops.
I sit and stare
and hope it will stay
to talk of something other than
the dust,
the fever,
the curtains.
It doesn’t.
It moves.
- Brendan Edward Kennedy
arranged by Sarah Walko
Categories:
Garage, Production Notes, Screening Rooms, Sombra
...

El Cadáver Exquisito | Sets/Installations/Musings
by
Sombra
To understand a dream we must examine it from every aspect -
just as you might take an unknown object in your hands and turn it over
and over until you are familiar with every detail of its shape. so you
can understand form with out time.
There are 2 kinds of electricity, playful static and lightning. Our
feasts are the moments we become the needle, sewing our reed roofs,
making these s...

El Cadáver Exquisito | Counterpart
by
Sombra
In my body you search the mountain for the sun buried in it's forest.
In your body I search for the boat adrift in the middle of the night.
-Octavio Paz
Exactly as in a musical score, it is impossible to understand myth as a continous sequence.
-C. Levi-Strauss
...In another time that is now, listen to the footsteps of time,
inventor of places with no weight, nowhere, listen to ...

Victor Ruano
by
Sombra
-There are four elements that make up the foundation of my
memories and of my present, that is to say, of me. They gave birth to
and laced themselves through all the situations that mold my life.
Two
of them arrived at the same time, while I was still a child: my
mother's garden and my father's library. I remember the first one
deeply, like a cloudy horizon. A forest of roses, with stems that
reached to the sky. And the second one, lumin...

El Cadáver Exquisito
by
Sombra
There are four elements that make up the foundation of my memories and of my present, that is to say, of me. They gave birth to and laced themselves through all the situations that mold my life.
Two of them arrived at the same time, while I was
still a child: my mother’s garden and my father’s library. I remember
the first one deeply; like a cloudy horizon: a forest of roses, with
stems that reached to the sky… and the secon...